Space Junk: Behavioural Economics and the Prioritisation of Solutions

ABSTRACT

The use and exploration of outer space is, according to the Outer Space Treaty (OST), to be carried out for the benefit and interest of all parties. Outer space is critically important to the defence and national security interests of many nations, none more so than the United States. Over time, a significant space junk problem has emerged. There is growing recognition of this problem and reason to believe that it will only get worse if current activities continue. Space junk presents a threat to the national security interests and economic interests of spacefaring nations. Various solutions are being proposed and developed. This paper presents an economic perspective and, in a particular, a behavioural economics perspective, on the space junk and national security problem. As various potential technological solutions emerge, we are interested in the obstacles that may stand in the way of an optimal prioritisation of the alternatives.

KEYWORDS:

• Space Junk
• Behavioural Economics
• National Security

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Also referred to as the Kessler Syndrome.

2. This was still more than every other country combined (Ferdman 2014).

3. For example, see Keehn (2018) and Skidmore (2019). The New Scientist’s cover for May 18 2019 leads with ‘The New Space Age’ among many other stories addressing the entering into a new space age that were published throughout 2018 and 2019.

4. In 1983, space shuttle Challenger was struck by a paint chip just 0.2 mm in size, cracking part of a window (Diaz 1993, p.372).

5. See Barberis and Thaler (2003) and Subrahmanyam (2007) for a review.